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User blog:ThePerpetual/Ultimaverse Cosmology and Lore
This blog is exactly what it says on the tin: a place where I can describe in more detail the origins and cosmology of my own over-arching Verse, including briefly touching upon how it may correlate to a Vs Debating context where pertinent. Without further ado, let us begin. What Lies Beyond Origin If there exists beings that came before The Unending and the Allending, none know of them- indeed, each would lay claim to predating the other (in some strange, esoteric sense- such constructs of the cosmos as time do not apply to such beings as these.) After what might be described for brevity’s sake as an “eternity” locked in combat against each other, each seeking some obscure object they refer to only as “The Answer” in their later dealings with the lower beings, these entities agreed to the Grand Wager that would come to shape all reality that was to come. The rules each agreed to restrain themselves to, simplified, are as follows: The Tome of Echoes would we written, a sort of codex that contained an infinite canvas of macrocosmic planes of being, as a vast battlefield for their war to be waged. No being would be capable of reaching beyond the Tome, without uncovering the last “verse” of The Answer. The being which did so would ultimately decide the fate of the Allending and of the Unending, and with them the whole of being. With this, The Unending’s Manifest was disseminated across the endless pages of the tome, alike fine dust in the cosmic winds of the void, while the Allending’s Unmanifest filled the spaces between, ever menacing to corrode these “pages” into the proverbial dust they were formed of, sundering the tiny worlds that composed each page of being from one another and casting them adrift. And so, the Unending at last resolved to inscribe into the pages law, imposing order onto the formlessness of their stark, blank sheets, and binding them together into a coherent, coagulated frame of being. And thus, the missing ingredient was found; within the context of these laws exerting themselves against the indeterminate chaos of the Unmanifest did the Manifest develop that elusive property known to most worlds now as Will, and begun to develop from that Will aspects that may be called sentience. Extinction Rapidly did bridges from one page to the next flow into one another, as Will bound the newly formed consciousnesses towards one another in harmony as they united towards their common goal of inquiring as to the world around them. They discovered, before long, the words of law written onto the pages of reality, and alike a grand editor began to link them from one page to the next, as if to form a coherent story. But could such a thing truly reach a peak? What happened when these newly formed beings used their sentience to win the game? The Allending could not allow such a thing. Fortunately for The Allending, with this newfound Will came a sort of shadow, the introduction of conflict and strife between Wills that were each inherently as unique as the snowflakes of a storm, each possessing its own facets and lenses through which to see the world. It took little time for the Unending to weaponize this flaw of Will against itself, formulating paranoias and ambitions and selfishness within the brilliant facets of Will, where they were obscure from the prying eyes of their compatriots within the souls of Man. Simultaneously, the Allending found that Will was a malleable and persistent thing- again, clever as it was, it found that its ability to persist even within its antithesis, the Unmanifest, would prove its undoing, for shrouding fragments of this Will in Unmanifest was capable of producing the Qliphoth, fleeting paradoxes that embodied all negative aspects of the Will that The Unending so cherished. Divided amongst themselves and assailed for the first time by malicious and hostile beings, the race that is now commonly called the nephilim went nigh-extinct, and with this did The Allending revel in its imminent triumph... yet, it did not know that one last Nephilim had escaped its notice. The Last Nephilim Hidden from the world in the depths of the Unmanifest by the greedy, sadistic Qliphoth, a final Will languished in torment, its nature as a being that carried the spark of Will internally enabling it to experience the flow of time actualized by the Unending's law, and with it the passing of such countless horrors as a substantialized, dynamic eternity, while to the Qliphoth it remained a simple flip of the proverbial switch to make the world that way. It was here that perhaps the grandest weakness of the Qliphoth revealed itself- it, too, sought purpose, and in the absence of all other things there would be naught left to impose an end upon. So, they held tightly to a fragment of Will and ended that, instead, again and again as it struggled to exert itself against the torture of the Unmanifest weighing down upon it. And in the grandest weakness of the Qliphoth was the greatest strength of Will revealed, in turn- adversity and suffering, given time, was something Will could temper into a resolve capable of changing that which isn't to that which is. With this power realized, the newly reawakened nephilim- named Abirik'l- was left alone, to face the world with nothing but a thirst for vengeance against the Qliphoth that taught the world suffering. Is it not in the nature of beings with Will to seek what is "right"? What is just? With the paths between the pages of the Tome of Echoes withered and frail, restored only by the revitalizing essence of Will, The Allending could not send its Aspects down the pages to smite this last nephilim from beyond his metaphorical reach, its own plot to divide the world having proven its undoing. And so, at length, the Qliphoth fell to this Abirik'l, one after the next... yet, the end of his path found not a Qliphoth as his ultimate object of hatred, but another being with will- a "God," as it called itself, named Samazerale. Hidden beyond the veil of the Tome on the "last page," he obfuscated from the Allending a sparing few beings like himself- "gods"- who would restore the Old World when the last of the Qliphoth was rid of the world. Unfortunately, Abirik'l's continued existence was keeping the Qliphoth an active menace to the world, drawing the desire to end Will forth like moths to flame, and so in order for it to truly end Samazerale was forced to conclude that Abirik'l had to return to the Unmanifest, for the survival of Will. This, to Abirik'l, was a fundamental betrayal of him by these other beings who refused to bear the burden of being as he had, shunting it off onto him as a sort of scapegoat while they waited for him to at last crumble and fade. And so, at length, they did battle on the last page of the Tome of Echoes, beyond the reach of any of the finite Qliphoth and yet bounded apart from the Allending. At last, the battle reached its climax... and Samazerale, in a final effort to prove himself genuine, threw the battle and fell beneath Abirik'l's overwhelming power. And at last, something changed in the nephilim. In witnessing, over the course of the battle, his foe's sincerity in wishing to better the world, in his willingness to give himself up to the future he guarded, Abirik'l stayed his hand and resolved to at last give himself back to the Unmanifest. In slaying Samazerale, he would have brought about the very thing he fought to halt- the consumption of the Tome of Echoes by the Allending- and ruined a world where men and gods can be one and the same once again. So, at long last, the Last Nephilim struck a compromise- bestowing a piece of his essence to Samazerale so that he may experience life and beauty, albeit fragmented, Abirik'l decided that perhaps the God's "Fate" and "Purpose" were not shackles, not the antithesis to his inner fire and desire for freedom, but simply the missing half. As thanks, Samazerale bestowed upon the nephilim one of the Gods he had saved, in the form of his now-signature halberd- Vengeance and Justice, actualized into something of substance and wielded as a means of striking down man's demons even as it draws them forth from the nothing. With Abirik'l unendingly battling across the breadth of the Unmanifest, Samazerale was at last free to work upon the canvas of the Tome- first, though, he had to take measures to prevent another extinction of Consciousness as nearly befell the world before. And so, from the scraps left of the essences of nephilim not swallowed up by the Unmanifest he and the rest of them forged mortality once again. For them, the first eleven pages of the Tome were bounded as sanctuaries, a place where mortality could flourish while the Gods toiled beyond to better understand the mysteries of the Tome that they lived within. These sanctuaries would come to be known by some as the Sephiroth, and the branches that connected them the Tree of Life... The Last Kingwar, Babylon, and Hero's Path A Betrayal This new world, composed of eleven principles, was headed by the highest and most definitive of them all: the Kether. Known otherwise as The Akashic Record, The Prime Source, The Governing Archetype, and more names of the sort in the time to come, it rendered the world an infinite wellspring of Archetypes. In this world, any and all could Self-Actualize: could decide that their story deserved to be remembered by the Kether, that they deserved to matter, by taking up such an Archetype in their own hands, and developing its power. Ultimately, this resulted in the generation of a new notion: Will. All of the world's actions, where there can be ascribed a sapient actor, are the result of that sapient actor willing it to be: sapience given direction to act becomes Will, the bedrock upon which the flow of things throughout the world is sustained, and prevented from stagnating. It is also by this principle of flow, or motion, that mana came to be a fundamental truth of the world. For as long as there was this flow, there was things that remained indeterminate: as long as there remained indeterminate things, in turn, there was mystery in the world. Mystery, in a world made up of story archetypes, meant that there was forces that lie beyond the ability of science to know: so, mana became a self-creating truth in the world, too, and through learning Magic: the art of channeling and using the unknown, transmuting it into measurable and understandable energy: these early residents of the Tree of Life became Celestials, able to master the world in which they lived. Yet, not all would remain satisfied with this state of affairs. Inevitably, the existence of uncertainties and unknowns resulted, even if very rarely, in ripples and eddies in the tide of things: with the eighth Sephira Daathe's presence the price paid for this world in which the Unmanifest resolved itself quickly, mere momentary anomalies, bubbles in a vast ocean of life and light. But with infinity came the law of possibilities: the inevitable truth that, someday, somehow, something possible would come true. Such was the fate that befell the Celestial known as Samael. Samael, a Celestial in pursuit of the riddle of what Will was, and how it and mana created one another ad infinitum, came to fall into the company of other Celestials who suffered the taint of the Unmanifest in the same moment that he, himself, fell into its influence. All actions in a world made of infinities are dramatic in scope: while this equated before, in the Tree of Life, to boundless joy and a transcendent exuberant, the abuses imposed upon him by such dissonant Celestials being themselves made infinite in scope pushed the already vulnerable Samael over an Event Horizon from which there was no return. Samael became, among the Celestials, the first willing vessel for the Unmanifest to express its own Will through: it's will being, in essence, to freeze and unravel all Will, all magic, all things that made the Tree of Life what it was. There was still Samael's curiosity- twisted, tainted by this suffering, but not so unsalvageable that the Unmanifest couldn't attach itself to it. "What was Will?" Samael would learn, if it meant betraying the very world he thought to serve. After all, had it not betrayed him? The betrayal was over in an instant. Samael, returning from that pocket of Unmanifestation changed and warped, cast his distortion into the Tree of Life, and bade the Qliphoth within him to possess it as his avatar. The Cosmos itself, suddenly hostile to the existence of Will, scattered the Celestials as the spheres that made up the Tree of Life drifted apart without the paths to connect them intact, before they had a chance to fight back - such came to be known as The Fall. Celestials were thenceforth faced with true finitude- with an end to their immortality. Samael offered his ultimatum to the remaining Celestials: "offer thineselves to the Tree of Life as sacrifices, or face extinction, as the Gods before us had." The desperate Celestials, largely, chose between simple demanifestation or consumption by the usurped tree, whereupon they were spat back out into the Daathe as Qliphoth Lords. Yet a few found themselves in proximity to a singularly unique world, within the bounded, hamstrung reality left in the wake of The Fall: a world in which the future lay clouded, shrouded in fog, un-authorable and unknowable- a singular surviving nexus of Will. It was a moment of truth, that moment in which the Celestials re-affirmed not their power now lost, but the purpose for which it was always meant to be asserted: the welfare of sapient life, and the capacity for beings to become the truest versions of themselves. Leaving imprints of their presence upon the planet where this Will most strongly focused: Terra, or Earth: the last of these Celestials returned to the stars, to push back against the encroaching Daathe beckoned forth into the worlds by The Fall. Samael, as far as he was concerned, had won. Inevitably, the strength to preserve this final world: Omega, the rebel Celestials had come to call it: would falter, or else a champion of the Unmanifest would rise up to topple them, and to ruin the endless possibilities of the Tree that remained, clinging as they did to the Netzach's more 'mundane' time. And while both proved true... Brave New World So, too, did there prove to be the opposite. As certainly as there existed sapient beings' capacity for self-dissolution and suffering, for- in a word- evil, there also proved to be immense capacity for selflessness and bravery, yet unwritten but promised to the world by its fateless state. Humanity, as the mortals of the race beyond were called, progressed for some time: on occasion, pockets of other possibilities, other realities more attuned more trained in the art of Magic bled into Omega, it being the most abundant source of mana in the multiverse as it was: humanity, while ignorant to the true extent that it was merely a fragment of a vaster world, bolstered its understanding of existence as a place worth exploring by passing such wondrous occurrences down from generation to generation as stories, fables, aesops- resonant truths that began to shape a formless, chaotic race into a people that found value in cooperation, and in unified pursuit of the worlds beyond the stars. The world remained this way, until... The Last Kingwar The world, and hundreds of others created by the uncovering of a tome containing the Celestial's understanding of the Daathe, converged upon Omega n Terra year: 1911 A.D., and magic as an art was rediscovered. Initially, in the chaos, grave threats to the future potential of the world to hold and metabolize Will appeared, in the form of an organization known as the Blades of Dawn. However, by the time the world was scheduled to collapse, twenty years following the Convergence, it found a means of persevering. The Risen Kings- heroes of the other worlds- returned to the sea of souls that mankind came from as sleeping Celestials: as Archetypes waiting to be wielded by the generations to come. In their wake, a brave new world of humans reunited with other races, from other realities and inhabiting other planets elsewhere in the universe now themselves dragged into Omega. Inevitably, of course, human capacity for evil remained: the Holocaust, the rise of organizations like the Khmer Rouge, and more all remained aspects of history, as they were in some of the timelines explored by the Risen Kings of before. All the same, it remained an age of hope- an age defined and inspired by the heroism of those Risen Kings that chose to rebel against the Blades of Dawn rather than join them. It became, in a word, an age of superheroes. Babylon Such a world as Omega's, while still new to magic, quickly adapted with the help of those wizards who had survived what became known as The Last Kingwar. Boundless, chaotic, and ill-understood, the magical gifts a few individuals inherited, whether by chance, labor, or inheritance from another, became to define them in their public personas within this new, massive society. While history prior to the Convergence varied greatly from "the First World"'s, or Omega's, in all of the other realities in which magic existed, the refugees of these now-gone realities adapted quickly, and were quick to the draw in establishing themselves as "superheroes." Alliances formed, as mortalkind ventured forth into the cosmos, and began the ongoing project of attempting to reunite with other civilizations out there in the stars, with magic's existence enabling the transcendence of natural laws such as the cosmic speed limit as it did. Mankind, however, is a sympathetic thing, and quite receptive to external influencers: even those, unfortunately, it'd be better off without. Mankind, yes, had begun the process of engineering artificial moons: first to replace the missing pieces of the one torn apart in the sky overhead, then more once it was realized how easily a once-done feat could be replicated, for proliferation across the stars as new vessels for life to flourish and explore the world from. It was this project that had come to be known as Project: Babylon. However, it had also begun to suffer a more insidious and subtle sickness. With the world beset by strife, eco-disaster, political toxicity, and a growing decay of the common person's ability to exert their own individuality in a world increasingly dominated in all meaningful ways by the commercialization of the concept of the mortal God. Mana, desirable genetics: anything that could be studied, and that could be controlled as a science: could also be marketed, and anything marketable can fall into irresponsible and dishonest hands. With power itself becoming the basis for the economy of the world, an endless feedback loop of the rich and privileged being born literally superior to the poor and unfortunate quickly resulted in a polarization of the world state, and a plague of suffering overtaking a mortal body increasingly born only to die, and fuel the mere pleasures of the privileged few. This dystopian nightmare had supplanted reality before the heroes of the world had a chance to fight back against it. The final nail in the coffin: the mastermind behind these acts, a malevolent alien force known as Ruin, completed the ritual previously disguised as Project: Babylon in order to beckon forth Vesper into the world, and accelerate its coming doom... History, they say, is doomed to repeat itself. The people of the first world, only vaguely remembering the first and second Wars that ravaged their world as magic tore apart time with the Convergence, fell prey to World War III, as the seeds of dissent and doubt Ruin planted in society finally broke through the ice. The rest, as they say, is history... A Terminological Glossary The Answer: A truly supreme anomaly, not so much pre-dating everything as being the very things that both are pre-dating and pre-dated. It is, if such an entity can be described, both everything and nothing, and not measurable in terms of numerals or mortal conceptions of "power." Anything that anyone might think of is all wrapped up as some component of "The Answer." The Allending: The antithesis of continued assertion of being; the world's "negative" attributes manifest as an almighty power. Exists "above" and beyond the Tome of Echoes altogether. Only rivaled by The Unending (and one non/pseudo-canon variant of Abirik'l.) The Unending: The antithesis of a true ending to things, that which renews; the world's "positive" attributes manifest as an almighty power. Exists "above" and beyond the Tome of Echoes altogether. Only rivaled by The Allending (and one non/pseudo-canon variant of Abirik'l.) The Tome of Echoes: The "Upper World", in its true form. Composed of infinite pages, each one wholly encapsulating and infinitely replicating the last across it, it correlates to what would be understood to be the different dimensions that a being occupies- the page on which a being is situated correlates directly to the number of dimensions that entity simultaneously occupies. Echo: In the context of the world, these would refer to a "page" of the Tome of Echoes, or a single dimensional layer. Each holds an endless array of realities for each of its possibilities, in its own right. The Tree of Life: The eleven pages sequestered for mortals following the near-extinction of Consciousness. As Qliphoth run rampant in the higher Echoes, existing beyond the Tree of Life is impossible for a true mortal: only Abirik'l, who sacrificed most of his mortality and these days is bound to the twelfth Echo Ain Soph Aur as the Tree of Life's guardian, continues to come close. The eleven pages of the Tome of Echoes given to the Tree of Life are also known notably as the Sephiroth in (K)Qabbalistic belief (singular form: Sephira). Most closely correlates to the eleven-dimension model of the universe understood scientifically through M-Theory. In the story of Hero's Path, it is corrupted and warped into an adversary in its own right by Samael, the true antagonist, and manifests an avatar "Yggdrasil" to maintain the Paroketh, and uphold Samael's cyclical game. Ain Soph Aur: The gateway to the "Realm Beyond", reached through the Kether. Constitutes the entire twelfth Echo (dimension) of the Tome. Kether: Refers both to the eleventh Echo (dimension), the highest in the Tree of Life, and to the energy synonymous with its being. Call it The Akashic Record, the Prime Source, the Governing Archetype - whatever it is described as being, the properties it bestows upon the world are manifold. Due to the Kether's presence, it is true, for starters, that the world is an infinite wellspring of Archetypes; any can decide that their story deserves to be remembered, deserves to matter, by taking up arms against the stagnation of the world. It is also made true that the world's actions are motivated, if not by entropy or chance, then by a Will: an actor, and that this will is remembered by the Kether itself as a pseudo-sapience in its own right. It is this dynamic state of reality that causes it to churn, and generate mana within its roiling cosmic winds. Mana, especially channeled by those who wield Magic, causes a defined and measured shift in the world, and thus creates mystery- gaps in the resonance of all people's knowledge. Mystery, in turn, their remains unknown things that are pursued by beings with will, and so the cycle sustains itself. Once, all of life was a part of the Kether itself, directly- it's immortal inhabitants. It was only with The Fall that Wielding Kether does not in and of itself correlate to eleventh-dimensional destructive power, merely the ability to interact with beings and anomalies in worlds beyond one's own: in other words, the ability to use 'hax', as its colloquially known in Versus Debates, on higher-dimensional entities. Daathe: The eighth Echo, especially noteworthy for being more a non-Echo than anything- a dimension consumed by Unmanifest, and a black hole for Will that nears it. Its presence is the price paid for the Tree of Life's nature as a sanctuary against the beings of the higher world, for without a place for unmanifest things to fall to or stem from, the world would fall into stagnant sameness, and mana and will would both die out naturally. Creates Qliphoth, both from unreal things and from the shadow thoughts and repressed impulses that are tethered to those unreal things. Qliphoth: Otherworldly, terrifying beings that reside within the Daathe. Inhuman and technically non-existent, their primary desire as a collective is the cessation and destruction of the very mortal life that spawns them, though their own sapience allows for them to formulate more complex plans spanning immense stretches of time in pursuit of this objective, often leaving allies among the mortals alive should they prove agreeable to their nihilistic outlooks on the folly of believing in the merits of free Will. Will sometimes afflict other entities with Blighting. Also spelled "Qlippoth": the definition for them remains the same regardless. Reflection: A Reflection, in the context of the Qliphoth, is a particularly potent Qliphoth born from either those who come to own Archetype Armigers, or from those who possess especially negative or repressed thoughts and emotions. Unlike most Qliphoth, Reflections are capable of mimicking somewhat complex personalities resembling their "creator's", but often twisted or tainted in correspondence with whatever internal mental block is stopping them from truly becoming the sort of person they wish to be. Will: Volition, the divine spark intrinsic to mortals that once made them and Gods the same. The existence of the Paroketh makes Will inaccessible as an active force for the majority of mortal-kind. The Paroketh: A veil severing the lower four Sephira from the higher seven. In doing so, it separates the four-dimensional reality known to mortals (height, length, width, time) from the higher Sephira that formerly constituted a full life. The Fall: The creation of the Paroketh within Yggdrasil by Samael, severing mortal beings from the divine and imposing upon them inconsistency, hypocrisy, and a weakness of the will. It is thought to be synonymous with the Biblical legend of The Fall of mankind, though the story described seems more metaphorical for the "snakes" lurking within mankind's soul. Bane: A Will-corroding substance that obscures much of Earth, and blocks off sections of the world from reaching each other, isolating entire sections of the world into pocket communities. Tessera, with Zain's help, uncovers a way to dispel the otherwise immovable clouds of the stuff. Thought to be the product of the Vesper, whose being is saturated with the stuff. Often, attaches itself to physical matter in the world it manifests within, resulting in more tangible phenomenon like the Banefall and the Banemist. Vesper: Zain's Reflection: or, more specifically, a Reflection of the promise made that one day, a hero would rise up to save the world from the belief that it is unworthy of existence. Vesper spreads Bane throughout the cosmos and devours the souls of beings that become too saturated with repressed thoughts and feelings, a chain reaction that instills these fears and anxieties in others in the world until, at last, entire populations are swallowed up into the folds of Vesper, a great floating world- like a hungry black hole that consumes souls. Category:Blog posts Category:The Ultimaverse